Fleeing Pakistanis face epidemic threat

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF on Monday launched an appeal for $47 million to provide quick relief and aid to millions of people affected by the worst floods in Pakistan's history.

Daniel Toole, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund's Regional Director for South Asia, launched the appeal to the international community and donor agencies after visiting a relief camp in Charsadda district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

Hospitals, banks and hotels have been closed due to lack of electricity, which has been cut off for over a week.

Fleeing Pakistanis face epidemic threat

Though aid agencies and Pakistani NGOs have been providing aid to thousands of victims every day, the scale of the flooding has resulted in millions of people in remote regions going without aid for days.

UN officials have confirmed the detection of cholera in the northwest.

The incidence of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases too is high, they warned.

Fleeing Pakistanis face epidemic threat

The UN has appealed for $460 million for an emergency response plan but officials have said more funds will be needed for long-term reconstruction and rehabilitation of entire communities that have been devastated by the floods.

In the northwest, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government asked displaced families to return to their native areas, as the situation was conducive to their shifting despite the fact that three rivers are in high floods.

The displaced people living in relief camps set up in government schools had been asked to go back to their own areas, said an official of the disaster management authority.